Nightmares and Dreamscapes
by Jack Hawksmoor
Summary: V and Evey, the happy ending. Sort of.new chapter thanks to gentle prodding by Abbey Normal
1. Ch1

The first time she saw him she was talking to a large number of common, everyday, furiously angry protesters. It was fitting, she would think later. At the time, all she had was a flash of that face, and the abrupt conviction that it was him. Not a mask, not just some random Londoner, V. Standing out in the crowd, watching her finish talking. To the new world, the new people that he'd helped force into creation.

He stood out in a sea of raised fists, of shouting and cheering faces. A swatch of calm regard in the patchwork crowd. It stole her heart away, took it right out of her chest and dropped it on the ground at her feet.

Finch saw it. He saw everything, he had a knack for it. He was already leaning over toward her, a question in his eyes as she stepped back, shaken.

Her eyes would search the crowd over and over again. Evey saw people dressed like him, but she did not see him again.

She could not say, exactly, how she knew it was him. She could not say, when Finch asked, what it was that made that man different.

Later that night, pinning her hair up in front of the mirror, her hands started to shake. She had to stop, had to lay her hands flat on the vanity and face what she was feeling.

God help her, she knew what it was. Five years. Five years since she'd held him close and watched him die. Since she'd felt that her steps were already laid out in front of her, waiting for her feet to fill them. For a frozen second, looking out and finding his face, it had happened again. Like she was falling toward something and couldn't stop.

She saw Finch in the mirror, saw him come up behind her. His face was sad even when he was happy, and he seemed happy when he laid a gentle hand at the back of her neck.

"You look lovely tonight." He said, his sad eyes lingering on the white curve of her shoulder. She suddenly felt very painfully fond of him.

"I'm sorry," she said, and had to stop, her words echoing back at her in an odd way (and she knew what that felt like, didn't she, she'd felt it before...). Evey forced up a smile. "I don't think I'm up to an evening out after all."

Sad policeman eyes going sharp, raking over her.

"Not feeling well?"He asked softly.

A brief swell of pity. For him. For herself. Her hands, she noticed, had started to shake again.

"No." She breathed. " Not really."

He was a perfect gentleman as she showed him out. She wouldn't put it past him to stay, to wait outside her flat all night in his car, watching to see who came and went. If she was charitable she would say he was making sure that no one had spooked her at the meeting, that no one came by that night to harm her. If she was not charitable she might suspect he had someone doing that every night, just to make sure she didn't get into trouble.

There were too many shadows in her room and she thought to go to sleep early, to banish the day into her past.

After she got into bed the darkness started seeping in on her like black mold on the walls. The lamp on her bedside table dimmed like it was dying before it flickered out. Then, as if he'd only been waiting for that to happen, V sat down beside her on the bed.

She watched his mask melt out of the shadows like the moon coming out from behind a cloud, felt him shift the mattress with his weight as he settled himself next to her.

She'd locked the door. And the windows. Every one.

"I missed you." The words fell from her lips without thought, sounding simple and foolish to her own ears.

There was a sigh in the dark, and a piece of it lifted to her face, folding into a glove to brush over her cheek. It felt like leather. It was warm. She choked a little, at the touch, and suddenly flung herself forward, half expecting to find shadows and bedcovers and nothing else.

Instead she fell into strong arms, buried her face in warm cloth. She grabbed onto him like he would fly apart if she let go, and he returned the embrace, his hand cupping the back of her head. Hot bubbles of pain welled up, spilled from her eyes, wetting his shirt. He held her tight and let her cry.

"Evey," He said, once the raw edges had faded a little. It was the first moment she registered that he wasn't doing too well himself. He sounded terrible... She looked up at the mask with a tear-streaked face. He brushed her hair back, pulling strands free of the wet tracks down her cheeks.

"What-" She asked, and something large and cold shifted in her spine. "Why are you here?"

"I have something for you." There was a break in his voice and it frightened her.

"Wait." She said quickly, suddenly feeling like she was about to push through into something terrible. She reached up and cupped his face. Her voice went soft, wistful. "Just wait a moment."She leaned up and pressed a kiss to his false cheek, smearing tears on his painted smile.

He made a faint, anguished sound and gathered her up, the strength in his arms holding her tighter than she could have managed on her own.

Just let her live, right there, in that moment, forever.

"I wanted this world to be yours."He said, his voice doubly muffled, by the mask and by her shoulder. She could still hear him. His voice would make angels weep. A voice like his, she would have heard him through a brick wall.

"I can't keep a world in my pocket." She said into his shoulder with a little laugh. A breath of sound in response. It might have been a laugh.

"I know."He was stroking her hair. His hand was shaking.

"V." She murmured, and at hearing her say his name he tightened his arms around her until she could barely breathe. "V, what is it?"

"I...have something for you." It sounded forced out, and she burrowed herself a little deeper into his embrace.

"Bad?" She asked, but she wasn't really asking. V hesitated.

"'There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so .'" He said finally, loosening his arms around her very slowly, like a small boy dragging his feet. He touched her face as if he wouldn't get the chance again.

"I missed you." She said quietly. Those were the words she spoke, but she was saying something else. He stopped, as if she'd put a fist through his heart.

"I was here." He said, barely loud enough to understand. "I was always here."

A chill grabbed her by the spine and wouldn't let go.

He reached back, into the folds of his cape. Produced his prize like a magician.

She was staring down at a Scarlet Carson, perfect and delicate in his hand.

"This is yours." He said. She took it from him, charmed. Smiled up at him over the petals.

"Not a world." She commented, and abruptly cursed herself, he seemed so sad.

"No." Dejected. She had an odd notion that this might be more about him than her. Worse for him. He drew himself up sharply, as if he'd made a sudden decision. "Evey-" He began, urgently, leaning toward her, and she was startled when he continued to lean in, to press a carved smile against her lips in a kiss.

Then his mouth moved.

He was kissing her, the mask was alive, kissing her, and she couldn't breathe.

She woke up flailing against where she'd crammed her face into the pillow and took a few lungfulls of air before the dream came crashing back down on her.

She sat up in the sunlight, pushed back her bedcovers, went to wash her face. Tried to get on with things. Tried to ignore the fact that all the color seemed to have leeched out of the world during the night. It left everything looking tired and sad. She stood on her doorstep for a long moment before she shut the door behind her, wishing it was already night. At least then she wouldn't have to see how gray everything was.

When she looked out across the street she saw a low, black car parked so the driver could see her leave. Her hands clenched on her keyring, driving a point of metal into the soft flesh of her palm hard enough to hurt. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a fraying rope snapped with a twang.

"Oi!" She called, striding into the street. "You!"  
She saw the man behind the wheel jump, turn to look at his companion in the passenger seat.

"Shove off!" She shouted, coming to a halt beside the car. "Get out of here!" She gave the door a good solid kick as the driver started talking hurriedly into his phone. "I'm talking to you!" She slapped the window with the flat of her hand, hard enough to thump the glass.

Apparently needing no further encouragement, the man started the car, swatting away the hand of his partner as he gestured at Evey.

"Yeah, get going, shows over!" She growled at them both, stepping back so the car could drive off without going over her feet.

Finch usually stopped by at least once a day, to talk to her about something or other. He didn't bother trying it that day.

She saw V again, two days later, on her way home from work. She nearly ran her car into a ditch. Just a flash, a turn of his shoulder going behind a building...she jumped out of the car and ran to catch him, but there was no one there. She cried a little on the way back to the car, wondering if she was going mad.

"Why now?" She asked herself in the car. She'd nearly...she'd nearly managed...  
Evey thumped her hands once, hard, on the steering wheel. She cranked the car so firmly it coughed in distress.

Finch was waiting for her, on her doorstep. He looked like he'd been there a while, his briefcase and coat set down by her door, a large bunch of roses hanging from his hand. She didn't say hello, and neither did he. When she stepped up to the door he brought the roses up quickly between them. White and cream, not quite her favorite. She looked down into the bouquet, up at the man hiding behind it. A white flag, so to speak?

Finch tried a smile. He looked tired and worn out and even a little bit apologetic.

She took the roses, smiled down into them, a little. Finch leaned in as if he was sharing a secret and he loomed over her. She forgot how tall he was, sometimes.

"I am sorry." He said to her, and she had no doubt that was at least a kind of truth. He worried about her, she knew that. She stepped past him and unlocked her door, feeling rather than seeing him slump a little at the brush off.

She glanced at him with a sly curl of her lips as she stepped over the threshold.

"Are you coming in?"

She set the roses on the counter and fixed him tea while he told her in a politely veiled way about all the dangerous things going on in London lately, and how they were all threatening her safety in one way or another. He told her about a woman he'd found murdered the week before in her own home, he told her about a bomb found on a bus the week before that. He told her how much he cared about her.

She unwrapped her flowers from the paper and said nothing.

While she was trimming the stems he lost his patience.

"You're a public figure now, Evey. Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

She looked up at him in surprise, and a flicker of amusement crossed her face.  
"'I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none.'" She said.

Finch stared at her.  
"Is that supposed to be funny?"

"It's from-" She began

"I know where it's from." Finch snapped, and they were both quiet for a moment.

"I don't think," Finch said finally, his voice much softer, "That you understand what-"

"I understand perfectly well."Evey interrupted firmly, pulling a bottle from the cupboard. She selected a glass, added ice and several fingers of good liquor. She went over to the rumpled man sitting on her couch and offered him a substitute for his tea. His eyes searched hers, as they always did, for some kind of disappointment, some sort of rebuke in the offer. He knew he probably drank more than he should. She knew it, too.

If he was looking for her condemnation he wouldn't find it. There were worse things in the world than a good policeman who occasionally drank more than he ought to. He took the glass from her with a nod of thanks, and she returned to the kitchen to get some water. She gave some to the flowers in her vase, then moved past Finch into the living room to give some to the scarlet carsons in her flower box by the window.

She dipped her head to smell them, to feel the brush of the petals on her cheek, and thought briefly about love and death.

Finch watched her do it, watched her hair shining in the sunlight, roses everywhere. It was fitting, somehow. The quiet look on his face. She turned from the setting sun with a ghost of a smile, trailed her hand over his shoulder as she walked by him.

She turned on the telly, raised the volume with a pointed look when Finch started to go on again about her lack of sensible fear. Belatedly, he got the hint, but his pensive silence had a definite air of 'postponed until later'. Evey ignored this, and fixed some sandwiches. By the time she was done fiddling Finch had dozed off on her couch, drink still in hand. She regarded him with affection for a moment, retrieved her glass with a flick of her fingers. She watched the news for a while, thinking idly about bombs and a dead friend she'd seen vanish around the corner. Finch woke when she draped the afghan over him, preparing to retreat to her bedroom with a book.

He was embarrassed, and got up to go even when she told him it was all right, it was fine, he had her couch any time he liked.

"No..." He looked at her strangely for a moment. Like it hurt just to look at her. "No, I've left some things back at the office..." It was a lie, obvious from the second he said it, and it startled her. He leaned over, kissed her quick on the corner of her mouth, and turned to go. He stopped at the door.

"Thanks," He gestured with one hand. "For the tea."

"Any time." She said to his back with a frown, and shut the door after him.

That night, the dream she had was much more difficult to ignore.

* * *

_"there is nothing either good or bad;But thinking makes it so"-Hamlet_

_"I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none"-Macbeth said it first, V said it a bit later on._


	2. Chapter 2

There was a roaring in her ears, wind and fire. She was falling into darkness that was total and complete, giving no comfort and taking no quarter. It felt like it was eating her from the inside out, a sheet of paper tossed into a fireplace. A hole burnt right through the middle, curling brown out to the edges until there was nothing but ash.

Then she turned around, and he was there. He had her arm, he was pulling her inside a room, and it was that room, god, of all the rooms in the world...her cell, her old cell in the false prison down in the shadow gallery.

She glanced back, and the darkness was seeping in after them, crawling over the walls like a million black skittering insects. A few seconds, no more, so she flung her arms around him, pressed her face to his neck, the last thing she would ever do...the darkness closed in, and she held her breath, bracing herself.

Two seconds, three...five...Evey stole a peek, mildly bemused that it was taking so long. She couldn't see anything. She blinked, blinded. She'd been blinded. Then V's arm tightened around her waist and the world tilted crazily.

She realized, rather abruptly, that they were on a bed. With sheets. V had rolled over, shifting her to lie on her side. Gently, he pressed a human mouth against the corner of her lips. Later, she would realize he started where Finch had left her, a soft kiss to the side of her mouth, almost if he wanted to claim the spot as his. Wipe out any mark Finch might have left on her.

At the time something about the gesture caught at her mind, snagging like old thread, but not quite pulling her from the dream into memory. It shook her up, though. It stole the breath right out of her.

"Don't go." She gasped, kissing him like he was a drink of water after a walk in the desert. "Don't leave-"

"-Evey-"

"Don't..."She insisted.

"I'm so sorry..." He managed, sounding like a man on the edge of being completely undone. The longing...the anguish in his voice made her want to crawl out of her own skin. She pressed her mouth to his face, his neck, kissing him over and over. His hand came up to the back of her neck and held her in place for a thorough exploration of her mouth. She tightened her arms around him, tasting him, asking him silently for more. He was clutching at her, his fingers almost rough as he pulled her in closer, digging into her thigh.

"Oh, god," she gasped, lifting herself up, closer, so close... "Oh...god..." Please, please...he nudged up against her, gasping. He was already wet, leaking on her and she hitched her leg up, drawing him in. His hand clasped convulsively on the underside of her thigh, but he hesitated, muscles coiled and taut.

"Evey..." like a prayer..."Wait, I..." the sound of real desperation. Pleading for a moment of composure, a moment that stretched...it would shortly drive her mad. She made a raw little noise, pushing with her hips when he wouldn't. She remembered how it had been, the first time. God, so long ago...He'd been eager and awkward and blindingly tender with her.

"I don't care," She moaned against his neck. "I don't care, V..."

With a groan and the slightest of movements, V was inside her. A slight change of angle, and they came together.

V rumbled with a sound of pure pleasure that was so sensual she could feel herself tighten around him. He pushed into her once, smoothly, and stopped, almost thrumming with tension. He gathered her up, kissing her gently on the lips, turning his head to trail his mouth down her neck, breathing softly against her throat. After he'd got hold of himself he pressed into her again, and she met him halfway with a little thrill of pleasure.

His breath on her neck, his hands pulling her close to his body. Straining to be closer to her. A silent reflex, telling her that he loved her. A careful stroke of a hand down the texture of her spine, telling her he adored her.

She made her own confessions, soft noises, gasps muffled by his skin. A rising tension bubbled up, and when he next paused to regain his self control, she was close to pleading with him. When he resumed he was slow, pushing into her with delicate care.

Evey made a low, anxious sound. In response, the care grew more pronounced. Evey grabbed onto his forearms in blind, roaring desire, every motion he made against her spiking in her mind, flaring inside her.

"Evey," He choked, and she realized with a rush of blood that he was nearly there, he was...

She sounded like a child to her own ears, whimpering in the dark. He heard her and responded, thrusting into her more firmly with a sound that was nearly a growl. She arched against him as the feeling flared up into her abdomen, urging him on.

He groaned, and his next thrust was wild and desperate. He was shuddering against her, his sounds of ecstasy spilling across her skin. It flared right up through her, in a white-hot, crazy spiral...

"Oh," she gasped, and came.

It wasn't so much that she woke up. It was more like being tossed out, spilling into the world in a tangle of limbs. Sweating, gasping, and still twitching. She flailed at the covers for a wild moment, and then stopped, her heart constricting as reality set in.

He hadn't been there.

He hadn't been there, he was dead...

Evey flinched from her own thoughts, rolled over, pressing her face into the pillow. Any tears she might have shed were absorbed quickly. Nothing incriminating left on her face. She could tell herself she hadn't cried.

It wasn't like it had never happened before. It wasn't as if she'd never woken twisted in the sheets and panting. V had an effect she'd felt even back before Bishop Lilliman, back in the shadow gallery. Pointless to get upset about it after so long.

She rolled over with a sigh, looked up at the ceiling. Flashing on that moment in the dream when he'd grabbed her arm and pulled her inside her old cell. Away from wind and fire...

"He saved me." She breathed to no one, and for some reason thought of Bishop Lilliman's face. Thought of how frightened she'd been of him, and of V, and of herself.

Evey hugged the covers close.

"He saved me." She said again, somehow comforted by the sound of her own voice.

There was no possibility of going back to sleep. She dressed without thinking, stepped out of her house in such a gangled state of mind she couldn't really recall how she'd gotten from her bed to the door. Her brain was in skittish dissaray, falling all around her.

Then she felt the first drops on her head and lifted her face in blinding gratitude.

It started to rain, and she thought with shining clarity that it had saved her life. She sat on her stoop and leaned back on her elbows as the sky wept buckets down upon her. Soaking her. She watched the water run down her legs. Watched London cry.

Fitting.

She started to walk. Three in the morning, pouring down rain, madness, madness. She didn't really intend on going anywhere, but after an hour or so she discovered that she'd thought to bring her purse. She was close to a tube station at that point, half-recalled a certain friend of hers and the ungodly hours he worked.

A woman on the tube, fresh from a bar or perhaps a well-concluded date, stared openly at her when she sat down. After a moment of scrutiny, Evey heard her mutter.

"couldn't be..." and turn away.

Evey smothered a smile and said nothing, dripping in a dignified manner on the seats.

When she approached the building there was a cop outside smoking, barely sheltered from the weather by a quirk of archetecture. He stared at her as well, probably for a different reason. She thought, after a moment, that she must look a bit odd.

Then she entered the police station, and found herself blending in quite nicely with the strange charecters and barely controled chaos inside. That pleased her. Everything just so.

She showed her ID to get past the second floor, paused in a bathroom next to the lift. She caught a glimse of herself in the mirror after she was finished and stopped, caught by the sight. A waterhouse painting stared back at her, momentarily trapped in the ludicrous setting of an institutional loo. Dark tedrils of hair and huge eyes. The look on the girl's face was sad and oddly familiar...

Derivitive, old Mr. Waterhouse had gotten sloppy, she looked too much like the Lady of Shalott, just the set of her face, and why, where had she...

She felt something large and strange jolt her spine, like something alive and independent of her had grabbed her from the inside out.

Her heart stuttered in her chest at the shock and she gasped for breath. The air smelled like roses and leather and she was mad, utterly mad but for a moment-

In the mirror she'd seen, just over her left shoulder, standing at her back like some kind of ridiculous honor guard...

She felt something touch the nape of her neck. A movement, a shift of her hair.

Evey Hammond looked into the reflection of her own eyes as if she was seeing them for the first time and thought,

**now.**

She ran down the hall like all the hounds of hell were at her heels. There was no sense to it, no thought, not until she was right outside Finch's door. Whatever it was faded away, and for a disjointed moment she wondered, could a person be haunted like a house was haunted, did that even-

"Anything." Said Finch, from behind the door, and Evey stopped breathing."Yes, dammit," Sharper."but the girl lives." A moment of silence, and she aproached the glass set into his door, peered silently through the shut blinds.

Finch, at his desk, on the phone. Next to him, a little piece of equiptment folded out on his desk. Secret-keepers, they used to call them. She stared at it, at its cheery little red light, though the narrow gap in the blinds. He spoke again, and her stomach drew into a tight, unpleasant little knot.

"She's the Voice of London. They need-" a hesitation, then his voice came back, tight and angry. "Hammond lives. No disscussion."

It was funny how the police insisted on using the same old buildings. A sense of tradition, Finch had told her once. The soundproofing they had as a matter of course on newer buildings would have been enough to keep her from hearing anything. Old walls, old doors.

The old Evey would have stuck to the shadows, run away, said it was no buisness of hers.

Instead, this Evey took a firm grip on the brass handle of the door and pushed it in before Finch had even properly put down the phone. There was something to be said for new things.

She stood in the doorway and looked in his eyes for a moment. Studied his shocked face.

Whatever he saw in her eyes made him flinch. She continued to regard him evenly for a long moment.

"Evey," he began, and she knew from the tone of his voice that he was going to try, to try and pretend she hadn't heard a thing, try to find out how much she knew-

He'd been cutting a deal with someone. A deal. Her Finch. Buying her life with the only coin that sort would accept.

"Our integrity sells for so little," She told him, interrupting. "But it's the only thing in the world worth having."

He was her friend. She'd told him so much. The look on his face might have hurt to see a day ago. An hour ago. Five minutes ago.

She watched his face, watched his mind work, trying to think his way out of the situation. After a moment, it settled into an expression that was an even mix of shame and anger.

"Dammit, Evey." He sighed, and just sounded tired.

He didn't know what she'd heard, but had decided to assume the worst. She wondered, briefly, who he'd been bargaining with, could think of half a dozen people it might have been off the top of her head. Plenty of people still around who would like her voice silenced. One or two of them must have been closer than she'd thought.

"Call them back." She said simply. If Finch had been holding coffee, he would have spilled it.

"You don't know what you're asking." He told her, his eyes dark.

"I'm not asking." She said, and watched his temper flare a little. "Call them back or I will."

She had no idea who he'd been talking to. Lucky Finch was a pessimistic man.

Finch came around the desk and took her by the shoulders, looking down at her.

"Listen to me. You don't know these men. I wouldn't be doing this if there were any other way-"

He was nearly pleading with her, he was so intense and concerned and tender with her...

"I'm sorry you're afraid." Evey said, and meant it with every last inch. Finch stared at her as if she'd said something odd. She lifted her hands, gently pulled his fingers away from her shoulders. For a minute she stared down at his larger hands held in her smaller ones.

"If I could," She said, chosing each word with care, "I'd take it away from you. Put it somewhere it couldn't reach you. I'd do to you what V did to me."

She looked at Finch's hand in hers, watched him get pale as he grasped her meaning, and understood in a lightningbolt just how much V must have loved her. To try and get her to see what the world looked like without fear. It must have been bigger than the whole of his heart. It had to be.

"I would," Evey said with sincere regret, " But," and she barely smiled "Unfortunately, I can't. I don't have enough strength in my wrists to get you strung up properly."

Something vaguely like horror flickered through his eyes. She understood it. She understood the why of it, and thought, for a moment, that she might have thanked V for all his efforts when she still had the chance. She dropped Finch's hands and stepped back.

"You make the call." She said. "Spare me that."

She saw the break in his eyes, in the line of his shoulders. She turned to go. He looked strangely small and deeply sad, standing there all by himself.

She hesitated, touched his shoulder, and leaned up to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

"You'll be dead by morning." He said softly.

"With both our integrities intact, I hope." She replied, and shut the door behind her.


	3. Chapter 3

Evey knew where to go. A place that was safe, and secret. She'd meant to open the Shadow Gallery eventually, had made plans with that in mind for the future. She knew any museum would be thrilled to take the treasures it held.

She also knew that nothing was certain, nothing was stable. Museums could be burned, looted, destroyed by a careless word from the wrong mouth. So she waited. Not for stability, she could wait a whole life for that and die unsatisfied, but for a moment of calm. A moment when the past could be examined, indulged, enjoyed.

In another year, perhaps. Eighteen months on the outside. For now all of V's possessions were where he had left them. She still came down there on occasion, to think. To play the Wurlitzer.

A quick moment at his desk turned into an hour, then two. She wrote in fits and starts, occasionally stopping to wonder if V had written his speech at the same desk, before going off to blow up her job and throw her life into disarray.

Evey spent the rest of the night there, finally going to sleep on the couch with the expectation of strange dreams that never came. She wondered, when she woke, at the lack of them in a place that should set her unconscious alight with memory to draw dreams from.

Evey dressed in one of V's vintage frocks. Something demure and sweet, old fashioned and very suitable for what she had in mind for the day. She turned the lights out as she left, thinking without much hope that perhaps the echoes of V she seemed to be carrying around lately were done with her.

Halfway to shutting the door she stopped, stared doubtfully into the darkness for a moment. It felt like goodbye. It felt like when she shut the door, her steps were already laid out in a dance that would never lead her back here ever again.

"It's not like it's the last time." She murmured to herself. Hearing her voice echo in the empty space, she wished she hadn't spoken out loud.

She hadn't thought to play that song, she thought with a sudden pang. She wanted to hear it again, at least once before...

Evey stopped on the threshold, stopped dead by her own treacherous thoughts.

No, she thought firmly. No, I'll be late. I'll come back. Tomorrow, or the day after. The door shut with a finality that left her doubtful.

She'd called the station ahead of time, met the driver they sent at a newspaper stand within walking distance.

"You look lovely, Miss Hammond." The driver said in admiring surprise as he held the door for her. She smiled prettily. Very suitable.

They wanted her to change her clothes. She declined. They wanted to discuss her guest, they wanted to discuss the lighting. They wanted her to sit in front of the cameras and be the Voice of London. She had a surprise or two for them when the cameras started rolling.

They handed Evey her notes. She tossed them.

"Are we rolling? You're quite certain? Good. Then we'll begin." Evey looked at her hands for a moment, then smiled at the camera. A sweet smile on a pretty face. They loved her for that. That, and other things.

"Let me first begin by sharing a little secret with you. Not everyone knows this, but when I first agreed to do this show, I was given rights to my image." Her smile got wider." That is, I own myself, and anything I say can't be edited, chopped up, deleted or **altered** without my express consent." She leaned forward onto the desk and lifted her eyebrows. "And believe me, after tonight, they are going to regret that agreement."

She folded her hands daintily as the audience chuckled.

It took less than half an hour.

She started, as she often did, with her father. With those who spoke out and were killed for their efforts. She talked about fear, about what people were willing to do because of it. She talked about the great things that had been done by those who had refused to be ruled by it. She spoke of the night, five years ago, when half of London had stormed the gates, climbed over tanks and faced down the firing squad because they'd finally had enough of fear. She said, in no uncertain terms, how proud she had been to see them, so many of them, that night. She talked about the people who hated her because they were afraid of the things she said. She talked about the people who hated her because they thought she did not speak out enough.

"I love you, you know." She said at that point, as an aside, "Never stop."

Then she paused. In that moment, she almost changed her mind. A silent wrestling of conscience that had the audience muttering to themselves uneasily. She came out on the other side of it with her decision unaltered. Heart pounding unnaturally, she took a small roll of paper from where she'd hidden it in her lap.

"I have something special for you tonight." She looked down, demurely, then back up. " In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Marc Antony asks the crowd to lend him their ears. Already having your ears, I must ask you to lend me your hearts. This is a story, but it isn't make-believe." Then, clearing her throat, she read Valerie's letter on the air. The whole thing.

When she looked up from reading it, the silence that filled the studio was thundering. Carefully, she tucked the paper away again. She didn't really need to have it to read from. It was stamped on her heart.

She looked out at the crowd, wide-eyed and silent. Examined them closely for a moment. She wondered if anything she'd said could ever make a mark on them like the one she carried.

"It's true, you know. 'While the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power.'" She stopped and looked out into the crowd for a long moment. They knew where it was from. She quoted from him too often for anyone to be ignorant. "I hope, after tonight, we can all understand that. Thank you so much. Goodnight."

A startled silence was abruptly broken by applause. It muffled the panicked exclamations of the producers. She still had another twenty minutes to do. She still had a guest she hadn't spoken to. She snagged her purse from where she'd stashed it and went out the back way. Someone called to her before she'd gotten out the door, but she ignored it and quickly disappeared into the people traffic. Lunchtime. Busy London streets. Anonymity.

They were probably on the phone to her people before she was out the door. She'd already given her lawyer his instructions. Her speech was not to be cut or edited in any way, and would play in her regular time slot or she'd have everyone in the building fired. She hadn't pulled a celebrity stunt in all the years she'd been on the air. She figured, just this once, she could be forgiven for it.


End file.
